Your opinion on MNW's motivation to bet 10,000 BTC (one post per forum member)

[muyuu]

Pirate is playing the doubters like a highly strung fiddle, and beautifully so.  And MNW's appearance in the game has just incentivized pirate to delay even longer than he might have done otherwise, for pure entertainment value if nothing else.

You do realise that a 7%/week of ~500KBTC goes for ~5K/day, right? That would be the cost of 1 day delay and it's been a few already. I'm not totally sure of the composition of his trust, assuming a 7% over the whole thing. I'd appreciate if someone confirmed or corrected this.

[Bigpiggy01]

Did anyone say it was on a coin or bar for sure? Did anyone say it wasn't spread across more than one coin or bar? 

Not "for sure" but in the interview you recently did with Bryan, when directly asked about escrow, your reply was that you did not want to ruin a hologram on a Casascius product.

You also said you would be willing to move the coins to a viewable address should it come to that.
This is not needed if they are currently in a Casascius product, the windowed bits will allow a search easily.

If you do in fact have 10,000 Bitcoins in Casascius products, you personally account for 1/4 of all the active wealth inside them, as a fellow collector I find this extremely interesting.

People can learn for themselves, my initial posts in Matthews thread start here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=101751.msg1125563#msg1125563

Part of the interview I am speaking about begins at 20:50 in the podcast quoted below.

DonkDown Radio: Bitcoin Magazine Matt’s 10k BTC bet on Pirateat40 Ponzi, Poker is Skill (it wasn’t just bad luck all these years) & Crazier Mike

http://www.donkdown.com/donkdown-radio-bitcoin-magazine-matt-pirateat40-ponzi-poker-is-skill-it-wasnt-just-bad-luck-all-these-years-crazier-mike/

If you do in fact have 10,000 Bitcoins in Casascius products, you personally account for 1/4 of all the active wealth inside them, as a fellow collector I find this extremely interesting.

If you were a collector, you should know about "Roll your own coins". I do not need to own 10,000 individual 1Ƀ coins or even 2,000 individual 5Ƀ coins. I can own a 0.3155111Ƀ and 9 separate 1,111.11111111Ƀ coins if I wanted to (TL;DR? I load my own coins.) Now, part of the reason I'm being purposely vague is for my privacy and protection. The other is because the conspiracy theories are fascinatingly entertaining for me.

I do not know why you chose to bring the denominations into it.
What you choose to put onto a Casascius product does not change the fact that it goes onto a known Casascius address.

Sure having multiple may make it hard for you to share a single firstbits for confirmation, but none the less, the coins would be visible in the trackers.
The trackers are showing 40k active, you are claiming 10k.
 
Privacy and protection ...
hmmm I suppose that is vague enough to seem reasonable, god knows there would be no way to safely hide those coins again should they ever be found to exist.

This is the product Matthew is speaking about if anyone is curious:

I just thought of a new product I'd like to offer, and you can order it right now on my website for 0.13 BTC.  I will automatically treat any order of 5 or more "broken" coins as an order for roll-your-owns.

The "roll your own" Physical Bitcoin is simply a real Casascius coin without the hologram and without any funds.  Instead you get a fresh private key circle (so you can fund it) and a gold foil sticker to cover the key.

The big advantage?  CHEAP.  Especially in quantity, if you don't care about there being a Casascius hologram.  Perfect if you are trying to give BTC for birthdays or as freebies to others at the lowest cost, to someone who won't care about the lack of a hologram.

Simply order 5 or more of my "broken 1BTC sample" on my website.  Rather than receiving coins with a torn hologram, you will receive brand new fresh coins that have never been stickered.  You'll receive a sheet of gold stickers, and a pack of pre-cut private key circles to fit.  (I will typically provide a few extra stickers and keys than you paid for so you can feel free to test/ruin a few).

The circles are laser-cut and have the private minikey on one side and the firstbits on the other, and each one is unique.  To fund it, you look up the full bitcoin address via the firstbits from https://www.casascius.com/fulllist.txt.  Same policy as on my other keys - I do not keep the private key, for each key you get, it is the only copy that exists - you're also welcome to create your own keys if you feel inclined.

  Weak sauce is weak.

[P4man]

To be fair, his exact words in the interview were "Rip off the seal"

I used the word hologram in my post as that is what is common for Casascius products.
Matthew could have been referring to the gold foil sticker that comes with the roll your own product.

So he is not concerned about betting $100.000,  but to show that he actually has the funds to back up his bet, he doesnt want to tear a a 0.13 BTC gold sticker? Matthew, Ill buy you a new roll-your-own coin if you want.

[muyuu]

To be fair, his exact words in the interview were "Rip off the seal"

I used the word hologram in my post as that is what is common for Casascius products.
Matthew could have been referring to the gold foil sticker that comes with the roll your own product.

So he is not concerned about betting $100.000,  but to show that he actually has the funds to back up his bet, he doesnt want to tear a a 0.13 BTC gold sticker? Matthew, Ill buy you a new roll-your-own coin if you want.

He did say he was uber-long in BTC. LULz.

[Matthew N. Wright]

The only way I'm going to show you guys my coins is if you bet that I don't have them because:

A) It's none of your business
B) It doesn't reflect the existing bets regardless
C) Gotta collect the FUD tax

[SaltySpitoon]

If you were a collector, you should know about "Roll your own coins". I do not need to own 10,000 individual 1Ƀ coins or even 2,000 individual 5Ƀ coins. I can own a 0.3155111Ƀ and 9 separate 1,111.11111111Ƀ coins if I wanted to (TL;DR? I load my own coins.) Now, part of the reason I'm being purposely vague is for my privacy and protection. The other is because the conspiracy theories are fascinatingly entertaining for me.

I think, Pirate decided to give back the $ to everyone else, but as a way to supplement his income, he and MNW are working together to make these huge bets, so when Pirate does give everyone their $ back, instead of being down 500K BTC, he can be down 495K BTC (He and MNW will split the BTC) and Pirate can walk away with a cool $50K.

With that $50K, he will then move to Somalia, purchase a ship, and become a real pirate. Or if he screws MNW on this deal and walks out with the 500K BTC, he will buy an even BIGGER ship, and maybe even some gold from Coinabul to get his collection of booty started.

But that is, if Pirate isn't actually the Feds trying to monitor the flow of BTC, and have now decided that 500K BTC is the proper "Tax" to levy on the BTC community as a whole.

[Matthew N. Wright]

If you were a collector, you should know about "Roll your own coins". I do not need to own 10,000 individual 1Ƀ coins or even 2,000 individual 5Ƀ coins. I can own a 0.3155111Ƀ and 9 separate 1,111.11111111Ƀ coins if I wanted to (TL;DR? I load my own coins.) Now, part of the reason I'm being purposely vague is for my privacy and protection. The other is because the conspiracy theories are fascinatingly entertaining for me.

I think, Pirate decided to give back the $ to everyone else, but as a way to supplement his income, he and MNW are working together to make these huge bets, so when Pirate does give everyone their $ back, instead of being down 500K BTC, he can be down 495K BTC (He and MNW will split the BTC) and Pirate can walk away with a cool $50K.

With that $50K, he will then move to Somalia, purchase a ship, and become a real pirate. Or if he screws MNW on this deal and walks out with the 500K BTC, he will buy an even BIGGER ship, and maybe even some gold from Coinabul to get his collection of booty started.

But that is, if Pirate isn't actually the Feds trying to monitor the flow of BTC, and have now decided that 500K BTC is the proper "Tax" to levy on the BTC community as a whole.

This, in it's entirety is the most likely conspiracy theory out of all of the ridiculous conspiracy theories, because it shows me doing something adventurous. Come on guys. You can do better than that....  Nothing so far even shows any imagination for christ's sake. What if I just took a loan from Pirate for 10,000BTC? Wouldn't that explain my confidence? That's not the case but -seriously- lacking imagination trolls. Keep trying.

[Duderin0]

He WILL pay up: He sincerely believes Pirate will not default.

[rjk]

I hereby use up my one allocated post per forum member in this thread. Thanks for all the fish.

[julz]

Whenever I tell people about having met a particular sociopath - invariably someone will tell me that they can just 'spot them'.

I think Matthew is the sort of person who *thinks* he can spot a sociopath.   Many of them don't bother to hide their identities - consequences are just something to be weaseled out of later.

You don't truly understand sociopaths, until you realize that you don't understand sociopaths. They can often mimic emotion and empathy - or they wouldn't be good at what they do.
(I suspect that even sociopaths don't understand sociopathy - it just works for them)

[Matthew N. Wright]

Whenever I tell people about having met a particular sociopath - invariably someone will tell me that they can just 'spot them'.

I think Matthew is the sort of person who *thinks* he can spot a sociopath.   Many of them don't bother to hide their identities - consequences are just something to be weaseled out of later.

You don't truly understand sociopaths, until you realize that you don't understand sociopaths. They can often mimic emotion and empathy - or they wouldn't be good at what they do.
(I suspect that even sociopaths don't understand sociopathy - it just works for them)

YOU CALLIN' ME A SOCIOPATH!? haha just kidding.

[julz]

Whenever I tell people about having met a particular sociopath - invariably someone will tell me that they can just 'spot them'.

I think Matthew is the sort of person who *thinks* he can spot a sociopath.   Many of them don't bother to hide their identities - consequences are just something to be weaseled out of later.

You don't truly understand sociopaths, until you realize that you don't understand sociopaths. They can often mimic emotion and empathy - or they wouldn't be good at what they do.
(I suspect that even sociopaths don't understand sociopathy - it just works for them)

YOU CALLIN' ME A SOCIOPATH!? haha just kidding.

LOL. For the record.. no... I'm referring to pirate, but hey, I can't spot a sociopath until 30 minutes after they've ducked out of the restaurant to grab a smoke
I actually haven't put any money into pirate's scheme, nor made a bet one way or another.

I do lean towards him being a sociopath though - but that's the danger of having encountered them. You can start to think you see them everywhere!

I suspect he may pay back - but only because he's found some way to rustle up a few million and use that goodwill to pull off a much bigger ponzi next time!
I won't be investing in his next scheme no matter what.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Whenever I tell people about having met a particular sociopath - invariably someone will tell me that they can just 'spot them'.

I think Matthew is the sort of person who *thinks* he can spot a sociopath.   Many of them don't bother to hide their identities - consequences are just something to be weaseled out of later.

You don't truly understand sociopaths, until you realize that you don't understand sociopaths. They can often mimic emotion and empathy - or they wouldn't be good at what they do.
(I suspect that even sociopaths don't understand sociopathy - it just works for them)

YOU CALLIN' ME A SOCIOPATH!? haha just kidding.

LOL. For the record.. no... I'm referring to pirate, but hey, I can't spot a sociopath until 30 minutes after they've ducked out of the restaurant to grab a smoke
I actually haven't put any money into pirate's scheme, nor made a bet one way or another.

I do lean towards him being a sociopath though - but that's the danger of having encountered them. You can start to think you see them everywhere!

I suspect he may pay back - but only because he's found some way to rustle up a few million and use that goodwill to pull off a much bigger ponzi next time!
I won't be investing in his next scheme no matter what.

Good on you mate. Don't invest in high risk bullshit. I don't know what he's doing either, but I these people are throwing thousands of bitcoins into it expecting a profit. I expect my money back, but profits? Pff. Best just trade on the market.